Uniform Clothing Brand Liberty and Justice Benho Fashion

If you walk into Bloomingdale's and start browsing through bomber jackets, jumpsuits and T-shirts from the brand Uniform, you'll discover a similar quality of design and construction as yous'd wait from a brand sandwiched between A.P.C. and Alexander Wang on the sales flooring.

Only if you look at the cost, you might be surprised. At $88 for a bomber or $22 for a T-shirt, Compatible's wares are cheaper than Zara's. Even more surprising than the price-to-quality ratio, all the same, is the fact that Uniform makes Zara-priced clothing without any of Zara'due south ethical shortcomings.

"Nosotros know so many amazing people that volition canvas for Greenpeace or be the starting time person at this protest or that one," Uniform founder Chid Freedom explains. "Simply when it comes to shopping, they'll get for fast fashion or loftier street brands, considering they have cool clothes that are really affordable. Nosotros want to requite those people the opportunity to buy what they desire and be ethical and not have that cost them more than than it should."

The seed for Uniform was planted in 2010, when Freedom started the showtime fair-trade certified factory in Africa. Later on a childhood in Wisconsin and a career in Silicon Valley, the Liberian-born entrepreneur was fix to notice a way to give back to his war-torn state of origin. While he and his business partner Adam Butlein initially toyed with the thought of starting a microfinance bank, visiting Liberia convinced them that what local Liberians needed most were jobs.

"There was more than than an lxxx percent unemployment rate and more than lxxx percent poverty rate," Liberty says. The apparel manufacturer he and Butlein set up hoped to address that effect, specifically past providing jobs for women — and for awhile, the plan worked. Liberty & Justice, as the factory was chosen, did booming business filling orders for American brands like Prana, Whole Foods and Haggar.

Then the devastating Ebola outbreak happened in West Africa. The World Health Arrangement declared the situation in the Liberian upper-case letter of Monrovia "catastrophic," calling information technology "the most astringent acute public health emergency seen in modernistic times." The manufacturing plant, like much of the capital city, shut down entirely for nine full months. When the state of affairs had stabilized enough for workers to render to the manufacturing plant — many of whom desperately needed the work — well-nigh of the big contracts with American companies had been lost equally a result of the halt in production.

At that indicate, Liberty and his partner knew they had a choice. They could admit defeat, or they could start over completely from scratch. They chose the latter.

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They decided to establish Uniform, thinking it would be a good way to use the excess fabric they nevertheless had lying around the manufacturing plant from unfulfilled past orders. They had as well learned during their fourth dimension in Monrovia that many Liberian children were unable to attend school simply considering they couldn't afford a schoolhouse compatible, and they decided to accost that in their business organisation model, too. In a similar model to Toms or Warby Parker, for every Uniform detail purchased in the U.Due south., the visitor would donate a school uniform to a child who couldn't afford it.

"In that location's great research from MIT maxim that if you gave a kid a uniform, [school] attendance goes upwardly by 62 pct, examination scores get up past a quarter standard deviation and teen pregnancy is drastically reduced," Liberty explains of the reasoning behind this motility.

While the "one for 1" business concern model has received much criticism from international development experts for the way it tin can undercut the economies of the communities it claims to help, Uniform'south model was built to address those failings. Past producing uniforms locally rather than importing them and donating something that has a measurable impact on its recipients, Uniform was able to have the erstwhile model and improve it.

Luckily, the "one for one remix" was no less appealing to Western consumers, and Uniform'due south get-go Kickstarter reached its $50,000 funding goal in the offset five hours. The brand was able to aggrandize beyond its initial offer of uncomplicated T-shirts and oxfords to introduce the range of cool loungewear, pants and dresses that it includes today.

The brand'southward positive impact doesn't finish at donating uniforms or providing Liberian women with jobs. It's also committed to sourcing textiles in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible, and the original Liberian factory where it all began is 49 percent worker-owned. Liberty has too worked to develop a Made in Africa network, which is comprised of a collection of factories committed to conservation and empowering workers. Freedom hopes that Uniform'south success in manufacturing with these ethical partners in unlike African countries will set an example that shows what's possible on the continent.

"People are looking to Africa every bit the adjacent big manufacturing hub, which makes me really happy," he says. "Only I recollect if the goal were to exist 'let's re-create China,' we'd be missing a big opportunity. What I would like to meet is that these factories are operating with workers and the environs as a large part of the equation."

Every bit the brand continues to grow, celebrities from Shaquille O'Neal to Whitney Port of "The Hills" fame accept joined the Uniform fanclub, and A$AP Ferg has signed on to collaborate on an upcoming capsule drove. Liberty is confident that what's communicable on is most more than than only the mission — it'due south nigh practical, absurd and affordable clothes that wearers actually feel and look good in. "In many means the clothes speak for themselves," he notes.

"I think people meet our acknowledged bomber jacket and they go, '$88? How is that possible?'" laughs Liberty. "Merely we remember that when you overcharge people for ethics, that dissuades them from buying an ethical brand. And we're big believers in moving markets and the ethical clothes space. We're not as inexpensive equally the fastest fast fashion brands, simply you know when you buy something from Uniform you're not overpaying."